Three lakh taka into pearls, abandoned in two years with nothing sold

This university graduate in Jashore put three lakh taka into freshwater pearl culture and ran a training centre alongside it; at one point about 100 ponds were operating between him and the people he had trained. The harvest came out poor, and the pearls he did produce went unsold, because Bangladesh has almost no domestic pearl market. His working capital ran out before he reached the scale at which the crop pays, and he judged that another three lakh would have been needed to get there. After two years he wound the project up and now runs an egg business in Rajshahi. The same report notes that of roughly 150 pearl farmers nationally only 10 to 12 work at it regularly; an image pearl costs 40-50 taka to produce and sells for 250-300, rice pearls take three to four years and image pearls eight to ten months.